Weekly Wrap 6/16/17: Philando Castile & The Spiraling President

For news networks that depend on drama and a steady amount of plot twists, this whole Russian investigation has been a boon for advertising revenue. This week, the gifts came coming. Whether or not that is “good” for the country is another matter. It seems like seasons ago that we had Attorney General Jeff Sessions receiving questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was in fact, earlier this week.

Here are just 11 of the events that would consume headlines in a less chaotic week:

– Sessions testimony

– Congressmen Scalise shot and assailant killed

– GOP Senate healthcare plan coming under criticism from all sides

– American hostage Otto Warmbier returns from North Korea in a coma

– Trump shifts Cuba policy

– Trump considers firing Mueller

– Trump becomes a target of the investigation

– Kushner’s finances are being investigated

– Pence hires a criminal lawyer

– Police officer found not guilty in killing a driver at a traffic stop that was live-streamed

– Amazon buys Whole Foods

So expect headlines to be updated by the hour. But here is where news organizations are going with as people spend Friday afternoon reading news and The Decoder/commute home.

Let’s start with the police shooting verdict because it is such an incendiary issue and prompts the question “How is this okay?” While a portion of the population (especially minorities) points to this as an execution based on race and another portion of the population believes there must have been just cause from the officer’s perspective.

Lede: The Minnesota police officer who fatally shot Philando Castile during a traffic stop was acquitted on all charges by a jury Friday, a decision that came nearly a year after the encounter was partially streamed online before a rapt nation in the midst of a painful reckoning over shootings by law enforcement.

Lede: President Trump acknowledged publicly for the first time on Friday that he was under investigation in the expanding inquiry into Russian influence in the election, and he appeared to attack the integrity of the Justice Department official in charge of leading it.

Lede: President Trump, speaking at a Miami theater associated with Cuban exiles, announced Friday he is nixing his predecessor’s “one-sided deal” with the Communist nation – moving to restrict individual travel to the island, crack down on the flow of U.S. cash to the Cuban military and demand key reforms in Havana.

Decoding:

See how fractured the news cycle is today? Some sites are covering the police shooting front and center while others have not mentioned it anywhere on their front page. Even in your preferred end of the spectrum, different sources are covering different events. It is challenging to have discourse even when we are looking at the same set of facts. It is more challenging when we do not even see the other side’s (or a different sect of our side’s) set of facts.